Re: Engineers Pay

["John R. Strohm" <strohm@airmail.net>]

"Kevin Cline" <kcline17@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ba162549.0301202312.68f8be15@posting.google.com...
> "Alan and Carmel Brain" <aebrain@webone.com.au> wrote in message
news:<3e2a9af2$1@iridium.webone.com.au>...
> > "John R. Strohm" <strohm@airmail.net> wrote in message
> >
> > > In the United States, with all overhead considered, a good engineer
costs
> > > his employer on the rough order of $250,000 per year
> >
> > In Australia, with all overhead, taxes, insurance, etc etc it's about
> > USD $60,000. That's assuming 10+ years experience. Graduates - half
that.
> > Of course, the actual pay (before taxes) is about 2/3 of those figures.
> >
> > Actual case: programmer with 20+ years, including 15+ of Ada-83 and
> > Ada-95, several successful projects under his belt, salary $80,000 AUD
> > or just over $40,000 USD. Cost of employment, about $115,000 AUD (it's
> > an efficient firm, but his pay's way above average.).

Just out of curiosity, how many employees at the firm, what were their
annual sales, what was their profit margin after everything?  Annual sales
divided by number of employees turns out to be a very useful metric for the
health of the company.

> I'm doubtful that Australian firms can run with so little overhead.
> The figure of USD $250,000 presumably includes not only the payroll
> taxes and benefits but also the cost of space, equipment, and supervisory
> and administrative personell.  USD $250K or $USD 1000 per day
> is about what the company would charge for the engineer's time.

Precisely.

> The marginal cost of adding a single person is probably quite a lot
> lower than that.

Yes and no.  At some point, you can't add one more engineer without
reorganizing and adding a manager, or two or three.  It is much simpler to
figure the total cost of management and divide it across all the billable
engineers.

Think of adding boards to a chassis.  At some point, you run out of slots,
and you have to buy an expansion chassis, and power supply, and cabling.  Th
at costs beaucoup bucks.  Maybe you have to buy a whole new rack, because
there's no room in the existing rack for the new chassis.  Maybe you have to
have the facilities electrician come out and wire a new outlet, because the
existing circuit is fully loaded by the existing rack, and facilities will
be UNHAPPY if your new rack and chassis and board overloads the circuit and
starts a fire.